The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd Read Free Book Online Page A

a child, ears like little dried apricots. I fixed my eyes on them from the backseat and wondered why he wasn’t called Ears.
    The three men followed us in a green pickup with a gun rack inside. They drove close to our bumper and blew the horn every few seconds. I jumped each time, and Rosaleen gave my leg a pat. In front of the Western Auto the men started a game of pulling alongside us and yelling things out the window, mostly things we couldn’t make out because our windows were rolled up. People in the back of police cars were not given the benefit of door handles or window cranks, I noticed, so we were blessed to be chauffeured to jail in smothering heat, watching the men mouth things we were glad not to know.
    Rosaleen looked straight ahead and acted as if the men were insignificant houseflies buzzing at our screen door. I was the only one who could feel the way her thighs trembled, the whole backseat like a vibrating bed.
    â€œMr. Gaston,” I said, “those men aren’t coming with us, are they?”
    His smile appeared in the rearview mirror. “I can’t say what men riled up like that will do.”
    Before Main Street they tired of the amusement and sped off. I breathed easier, but when we pulled into the empty lot behind the police station, they were waiting on the back steps. The dealer tapped a flashlight against the palm of his hand. The other two held our church fans, waving them back and forth.
    When we got out of the car, Mr. Gaston put handcuffs on Rosaleen, fastening her arms behind her back. I walked so close to her I felt heat vapor trailing off her skin.
    She stopped ten yards short of the men and refused to budge. “Now, look here, don’t make me get out my gun,” Mr. Gaston said. Usually the only time the police in Sylvan got to use their guns was when they got called out to shoot rattlesnakes in people’s yards.
    â€œCome on, Rosaleen,” I said. “What can they do to you with a policeman right here?”
    That was when the dealer lifted the flashlight over his head, then down, smashing it into Rosaleen’s forehead. She dropped to her knees.
    I don’t remember screaming, but the next thing I knew, Mr. Gaston had his hand clamped over my mouth. “Hush,” he said.
    â€œMaybe now you feel like apologizing,” the dealer said. Rosaleen tried to get to her feet, but without her hands it was hopeless. It took me and Mr. Gaston both to pull her up.
    â€œYour black ass is gonna apologize one way or another,” the dealer said, and he stepped toward Rosaleen.
    â€œHold on now, Franklin,” said Mr. Gaston, moving us toward the door. “Now’s not the time.”
    â€œI’m not resting till she apologizes.”
    That’s the last I heard him yell before we got inside, where I had an overpowering impulse to kneel down and kiss the jailhouse floor.
    Â 
    The only image I had for jails was from westerns at the movies, and this one was nothing like that. For one thing, it was painted pink and had flower-print curtains in the window. It turned out we’d come in through the jailer’s living quarters. His wife stepped in from the kitchen, greasing a muffin tin.
    â€œGot you two more mouths to feed,” Mr. Gaston said, and she went back to work without a smile of sympathy.
    He led us around to the front, where there were two rows of jail cells, all of them empty. Mr. Gaston removed Rosaleen’s handcuffs and handed her a towel from the bathroom. She pressed it against her head while he filled out papers at a desk, followed by a period of poking around for keys in a file drawer.
    The jail cells smelled with the breath of drunk people. He put us in the first cell on the first row, where somebody had scratched the words “Shit Throne” across a bench attached to one wall. Nothing seemed quite real. We’re in jail, I thought. We’re in jail.
    When Rosaleen pulled back the towel, I saw an